This is a global plan to revamp the theme infrastructure in Tiki. This is led by the UX Team. Please join us!

As of Tiki11, the Tiki theme infrastructure is increasingly due for a revamp to take advantage of advances in technology

• Take advantage of Smarty 3 enhancements, especially Template Inheritance.
• HTML5
• CSS3
• Bootstrap Transition Preps
• http://www.sitepoint.com/native-css-variables/
• http://html.adobe.com/webstandards/cssregions/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design
• http://www.cmscritic.com/why-responsive-design-is-so-important/

Thus, in Tiki 13, we are going all out on "Mobile-first" Bootstrap 3.0

read up on the proposal, discussion and decision

When

• Any non-disruptive work should be done as soon as possible. Ex.: Fonts.
• For disruptive work (ex.: CSS consolidation), Tiki13 after the Tiki12LTS would be a great time to revamp the whole theme management in Tiki.

The bulk of the work could be done at one or two TikiFest Design Revamp

For whom

There are 3 target audiences

I just want to pick a nice theme

Here, we need more nicer bundled themes in Tiki. Ideally, we'd have access to Web Template Repositories like https://dev.tiki.org/CSS+Frameworks+and+Preprocessors#Bootstrap_themes_repositories

For them, themes is just one of a thousand features and they just pick it. (Can be documented at doc.tiki.org)

Point & Click themer

• Improve Theme Generator or use some like https://dev.tiki.org/CSS+Frameworks+and+Preprocessors#Bootstrap_theme_generators
• Make it easier to create a menu
• Improve Module handling

Professional designers

• They like things like Skeleton.css or http://dev.tiki.org/CSS+Frameworks+and+Preprocessors#Twitter_Bootstrap
• How to avoid to get in their way

All the action should be on themes.tiki.org

Todo

• Use any font in Tiki (not just web fonts) HTML5

To discuss

• Why Tiki themes never look WOW
• CSS Frameworks and Preprocessors
  • Using Less CSS with Tiki
• Deployment of themes: Mods or profiles? If we continue with mods, we should improve them
• theme & css work, including Simplification of CSS
  + One target: reduce module content specific rules with module zone specific rules (needed because a module can be placed anywhere, and different zones have different colors, etc.)
  • Consolidation of stylesheet files
  • Rethink function and location of various CSS files (css directory vs. styles directory, feature-specific (admin.css) vs. global (layout.css and theme stylesheets), etc.
    Reduce redundant rules (no need to specify body in three or four files, etc.)
• http://www.ohloh.net/p/assetic which can also do LESS, SASS, etc. and there is a http://github.com/widmogrod/zf2-assetic-module,
• http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.cms.tiki.devel/21224
• CSS framework(s) ?
• SVG Icons using Raphael
• CSS3 Buttons
• Sprite Generator for small icons
• Discuss theme strategy of other CMSs to see what we can learn and improve (WordPress, etc.)
• etc.

Related topics

• Print
• Mobile
• Accessibility

Related links

• http://www.slideshare.net/Webnific/cms-comparisson-3850088
• http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/03/joomla-and-wordpress-a-matter-of-mental-models/
• http://www.majordojo.com/2011/02/how-did-wordpress-win.php
• http://mashable.com/2011/09/30/website-usability-tools/

• Themes Revamp